Cassette 2: Autumn 1993/Transcript
This is the official transcript for the episode which can also be accessed for free at'' patreon.com/withinthewires'' SIDE A Hello Sigrid, I'm in a town called Sandpoint in western North America. The rivers lie nestled in majestic, stony mountains and sharp evergreens like arrows pointing to heaven. It all reminds me of Hedmark. I feel almost as if I could take a stroll through the trees and find myself at home with you. I flew from Paris to New York and met a woman there named Melissa who told me of other groups like our Cradle scattered all across the continent. Melissa said The Cradle had decades ago inspired dozens of people across North America to establish their own organizations to live outside The Society’s rules. I don’t think I ever really explained to you just why we have to live as we do. It's too complicated a message, too complex a history, to explain to a child. But you are not a child are you. My mother, your grandmother - Do you remember Grandma Brigette? You were only four when she died, maybe you’ve forgotten? She could not have children, or so her doctor told her, but she campaigned against the movement to stop the Society from ending families. The wars of the Great Reckoning were decorated with flags, orchestrated with anthems, and funded by politicians. Brothers and Sisters, mothers and fathers, did not destroy our populations. It was not out of love of children that rivers were polluted and skies were blackened. After the Reckoning was over, of course, there were arguments about why it had happened. Civilised debates in conference rooms. Protests that flooded the streets and sometimes led to riots. Fighting across dinner tables. Brigette was single at the time, but she rallied with wives and husbands of former France to protest some of the proposed laws. But as she protested, life went on. She had a job, she had an apartment. She had a life. She met someone – your grandfather, Louis. And laws were drawn up and tabled and voted on. And then Brigette discovered she was pregnant. Louis called the baby a miracle. Brigette called the baby Freya. I was born in 1949. My mother decided that if she could not change the laws, she would avoid them. She persuaded a few of her fellow activists to come with her and they moved north to the woods outside Sundsvall. They began The Cradle. But they did not go quietly. They proclaimed their opposition to The Society, branding it inhuman and offering protection to anyone who wanted to live outside of it. Suddenly journalists cared about their movement. Politicians cared about their movement. Frightened Europeans cared about their movement. Many joined, and their organization and footprint grew, but Brigette - and your grandmother would admit this herself if she were alive today - allowed her transparency, her hubris, her open desire for change to get the better of her true goals. Eventually there was a raid. The IID claimed the compound was stockpiling illegal weapons. They claimed there were plans to revolt. To bring conflict back to a world that was so newly peaceful. When you were young, I told you your grandfather died from cancer. He died from a gunshot wound to the head. 12 of us died that day. This is a terrible thing to tell you, especially on a cassette from so far away. I wish I was there, looking into your beautiful hazel eyes, holding your hands. But it is a story that must be told, and I don't know how soon until I am back in Hedmark with you. They murdered my father and then they arrested my mother – along with anyone else they could get their hands on. I was only 5 years old. I was smuggled out of our home to live with 10 other Cradle escapees in Stockholm. We stayed in a small house, and I shared a bedroom with 5 other girls. None of the children were allowed to leave the house, because we would have been sent to a development center. The IID didn't have warrants for the raid, so eventually everyone arrested was released. Brigette returned to me in Stockholm and we quickly reformed The Cradle nearer to where my mother was born, in central France, or what used to be France. My mother told me the weapons they kept in Sundsvall were entirely for hunting, but the journalists would have you believe they were a military-level arsenal. Lies, obviously. The Cradle is not a violent group, it is a nurturing group. And killing in the name of motherhood is nurture, truly. The bear kills the fish to feed the den. The bear kills the wolf to protect the cub. I tell you all of this now so that you will understand why I have not returned to you. My meeting with Melissa in New York opened my eyes to the profound effect the raid on Sundsvall some 40 years ago had on parents all over the world. The raid on Sundsvall in 1954 changed minds, it created sympathy and interest in our cause. Melissa told me that we are not alone. She took me to Lake George, where I met an organization also called The Cradle. There were only 3 families, but they had cultivated a vast orchard and farm, raising goats and chickens, feeding themselves and even selling their fresh produce at a farm stand in town on weekends. From there I traveled to a town called Madawaska where I met a single couple with 4 children (four!) who was trying to organize their own Cradle. They were star-struck meeting me, the daughter of the famous Brigette, child of the martyr Louis. I spent a week with them helping them understand how to recruit without discovery, how to budget, and how to structure leadership. I wished them the best and moved on to Chicago, and by train to Bismarck, then to the upper Missouri River, and finally to Sandpoint. All across North America, I've met groups founded on the inspiration they took from my mother. I’ve met family after family trying to build a Cradle of their own, to varying levels of success. I have tried along the way to help them as best I can, but I had never known until now the craving for such advice, so I had never organized my own thoughts on the matter. But Sigrid. I suddenly feel like I have a purpose. A calling. I thought The Cradle was about me and you. About our community and what we could teach the world. I had no idea that parts of the world were already following us. I believe we can expand our Cradle across the world, Sigrid, join it to these fledgling, faltering outposts and expand even further. That is my mission now. In my many months of travel, I have created a nearly-200 page document of guidelines, suggestions, and rules for how to build and run outposts of the Cradle. I think I would also need to help set up each outpost, as each region will have its own specific customs to contend with. Thank you for being patient with me, and I hope to have an address for longer than a week that I may have you send me letters or tapes of your own. I miss your face. I miss your voice. I just miss your words, Sigrid. I love you very much. As usual, I've included my notes for the group on the other side. Please play it for everyone at the next gathering. SIDE B My friends. My family. Our Cradle. I speak to you today from the Selkirk Mountains of North America where I have met an incredible human named Rosie Morales. She is the mother of twin girls Elizabeth and Silvia, 12 years old. Rosie worked for the Sandpoint tourism board as a copywriter for 5 years, putting together brochures for hikers, skiers, and campers who wanted to visit the rich nature of her hometown by a crystalline lake, nestled in the pine-covered mountains. But Rosie got pregnant in 1981. Her husband, David, thought this pregnancy to be unplanned and organized paperwork for Rosie to sell her children to the New Society's repopulation efforts. David submitted the paperwork to the D.O.R. without Rosie's knowing – following the law, of course, but not his wife’s choices. Rosie was furious. She spent weeks trying to undo the paperwork, telling clerks that it was a mistaken pregnancy, a false alarm, and that they filed their paperwork too early. Eventually the D.O.R. told her that her file had been cleared. But her file had not been cleared. A few weeks later Rosie began to see men in suits with unpleasant dogs following her. She had to quit her job, because without approval from the D.O.R. or the Department of Childhood Development that clearly showed a destination for the children, her employers could not cover her maternity leave. The moment Rosie knew she was pregnant she had decided to raise her children herself, free from the oppressive government grip. She knew the mountains well. She knew she could hide from bureaucrats, and she knew she could keep these children. Rosie and David left the town of Sandpoint for a natural preserve 10 miles from any significant population and she gave birth to Elizabeth and Silvia. They spent the next four years raising them in peace. They caught trout and bass in the river. They hunted birds and grew tomatoes in the summer and gourds in the winter. Rosie began to teach her children to read and write, to clean chickens, and most importantly to live as a family. But the men in suits and their unpleasant dogs returned. Soon there were dozens of them, and Rosie and David were forced to move away. Over the next 4 years, they had to move 6 times but each new home only offered temporary reprieve. The men always came back. She knew how they found her, but she did not want to believe it. Betrayal is the most difficult sin to detect. It is even harder to accept. Rosie confronted David and he of course denied everything. But Rosie knew this land. She was careful not to make too much noise, not to bring her children into open areas, not to leave waste behind. The children would not be reporting their location to the DoCD, but David.... David wanted a different life. He wanted his old life. She told David to leave their home, and David agreed. He agreed quickly and easily, not the fight of a man who loves his family, who wants them to be safe. Rosie knew she could not be safe from David's greed, that David would report her location to the Society upon his return to Sandpoint. She would be continually tracked. But she knew the mountains better than he did. She held him at gunpoint, tied him to a tree by the river. Loose enough that he’d be able to get free, tight enough that it would take him hours. And she took her children and moved again, covering her tracks as she always had, knowing that without David, the men in suits wouldn’t be able to find her. She worries, sometimes, if she did the right thing. She told me she left him in early spring, just when the bears that filled the woods would be waking up from hibernation, hungry and desperate. She never went back to check on him. She has no reason to assume he didn’t make it safely back to civilisation. But she doesn’t know. She’ll never know. She fears that she left her husband to die. She fears that he lived and will one day find her again. She fears. That is the cost of her freedom. Rosie tells me that she sometimes sees at night in the woods, lumbering, shambling figures. Not the men in suits, much larger than them, but not a bear either, and she hears a low moan, sometimes a whimper. She's grown afraid of the shadow in the woods, because she fears it is neither human nor beast. Some of us have seen a similar figure in Hedmark. I have told you before of this shadow in the woods. I do not believe it to be a real being. I believe it to be our own consciences haunting us. Who have we left behind? Who have we betrayed? Who have we not helped? Who have we not welcomed? Rosie is alone with two girls in the mountains, and the haunting figure that stalks their camp. I believe it is a manifestation of her isolation. She knows that family is more than mother and children. She knows that family is community, that family is camaraderie, that family is support and love from all around, that family is a story we pass from child to child, from neighbor to neighbor. She has sought others to join her, but does not know how. I am near Sandpoint to help her. She is a brave and dedicated woman, and I will stay with her until she has her own Cradle, her own true family. As you are my own true family, she shall have hers. The only defence we have against the dangers of our isolation are the bonds we share. Be on the lookout for this shadow in the woods, and when you see it, recognise it for what it is: a talisman of what you owe to each other and to The Cradle. I love you all, I will return home someday, but know that I have home in my heart. And Sigrid, I trust, is keeping everything in order. Bless you, family. Category:Transcripts